


The Memory that I was Yours

by wyrmy



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Childhood Friends, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Sort-of, Theology, not much happens tbh, not so much angst as melancholy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-15
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:21:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27031090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wyrmy/pseuds/wyrmy
Summary: Aziraphale was best friends with a strange boy when he was five years old who invented an entire cosmology for their elaborate game of pretend. Then his family moved away and Aziraphale never thought he'd see him again.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 24
Kudos: 50





	The Memory that I was Yours

**Author's Note:**

> I've never posted a fic before so it'd be an understatement to say I'm nervous. I haven't decided if the story continues or not, so at present it's just as bite-sized as I could make it. it's just an emo petit-four. And yes, the title is a MARINA lyric.  
> Also the present-day bit takes place in 1995, in case you're wondering what the vibe is.

It was raining. For the rest of his life, sudden rain showers would remind Aziraphale of that day. The rain came down in fat droplets, which ran shocking cold down his face out his sodden hair. Hunched miserably in on himself under a tree, Aziraphale was scared and alone and only five years old. As he chewed absently on the end of his finger, he frowned at the falling rain and worried. It was to become a life-long hobby, worrying. 

“Hey,” someone said, and poked him in the arm. Aziraphale jumped.

“What?” he asked, wide-eyed. 

The boy who had poked him was thin and dark-haired, dressed all in black and soaked through. “Room for a little ‘un?” he said. Aziraphale blinked.

“Can you move over?” the boy looked annoyed. 

“Sorry,” said Aziraphale. He shuffled over a little, giving the boy space to stand next to him in the shelter of the tree. He could feel the boy’s bony arm where it dug into his soft and pudgy one. 

“My name’s Crowley, by the way,” said the boy. “Anthony Crowley, at your service.” He gave Aziraphale a grin that was missing a tooth.

Aziraphale took his proffered hand and shook it gingerly. “My name’s Aziraphale.”

“That’s a cool name.”

“Oh, do you think so?”

“Yeah I do. What’s it mean?”

“It’s the name of an angel. Not a very important angel,” he hastened to add.

“That’s okay. I’m not important either, yet, but soon I will be. I’m going to be a cool spy and I’m gonna shoot a lot of bad guys, just like James Bond.” He loaded and aimed an imaginary gun as he said it, sighting along the barrel and firing at a passing teacher. “I’m not gonna kiss a bunch of ladies though, yuck.” He stuck his tongue out.  
“Yuck,” Aziraphale agreed with feeling.

Crowley looked him up and down, frowning. “Why don’t you have a jacket?”

“Oh um. I gave it away.”

“You what?”

“I gave it away! Gabriel told me not to but she looked so cold. I’ve never seen her wearing one and I have two… oh I do hope I didn’t do the wrong thing.”

Crowley was looking at him with a face Aziraphale didn’t understand. “Gosh, you really are an angel.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“I do, angel. I think maybe you’re an actual angel, from heaven and everything.”

“What’s that make you?”

“Can’t you tell?” he grinned wickedly. “I’m a demon.”

“But doesn’t that mean you’re evil?”

Crowley leaned forward and looked at Aziraphale gravely. “Do you think I’m evil?” he said.

“No, I don’t think that.”

“Maybe demons aren’t all evil. Maybe we’re people, just like all the humans, just living our lives.”

“But surely if that if that were true, angels would be just people too. It stands to reason, doesn’t it? So they wouldn’t be perfect, or even always good. My parents always said that angels were good.”

“Well you’re the angel, you get to choose. You wanna be a person, or be perfect?”

Aziraphale bit his lip. “I don’t know,” he said. “I can’t decide.”

“Take your time, angel.”

*

They were best friends for three months. Crowley was silly and mercurial, and the most interesting, the most wonderful person Aziraphale had ever met. He played pranks on the boys who bullied Aziraphale, he talked back to the teachers who frightened him, and he made fun of the girls who laughed at him. He was ten times funnier, smarter, and tougher than any of them. When Aziraphale’s siblings called him cruel names, or when Crowley’s own parents yelled at him, he’d pull Aziraphale aside and say: “What they say doesn’t matter, angel. They’re just humans. They don’t understand what we are.”

Aziraphale played along with it, with more enthusiasm the more time passed. He called Crowley his enemy, his adversary, a foul fiend, a wily serpent, and wondered if Crowley heard how he said the word “cunning” the way most people might say “brilliant” or “wonderful”. The game grew in complexity as time passed, Crowley filling in their backstories, their human disguises, their missions. Crowley was so dedicated and so frighteningly convincing that the narrative of the game began to take up a permanent place in Aziraphale’s mind. It was automatic after only a few weeks, for Aziraphale to cajole Crowley into doing his homework because it was “part of his demonic assignment” or to encourage him to eat “in order to fit in”. When Aziraphale at home and alone as could be, Crowley’s words came to him unbidden, saying, “you’re an angel and they’re only mortal. They don’t have any power over you.” 

Even ten, fifteen, twenty years later, Aziraphale found himself saying “humans” when he meant “people”. The story that played out in the back of his mind, that he was an angel sent by God to thwart the Serpent of Eden, was a comfort and a curse, giving him secret reassurance, even as it made him feel isolated. Sometimes he blamed his lack of friends on that long-ago childhood game. Sometimes he thought he befriended no-one because no-one measured up.

One day, when he was still five years old and three months into the deepest relationship of his life, Aziraphale walked on a Sunday afternoon to Crowley’s house, with a hand-picked present of daisies clutched in his small fist, only to come up short when he saw the van parked on the street in front. Crowley’s father was putting boxes in the back of the van, while Crowley, buckled into the back seat of the family car with his sister, caught Aziraphale’s eye and started crying. Crowley pressed his hand against the car window and Aziraphale waved back, stunned. Crowley’s dad jumped into the driver’s seat of the van, Crowley’s mum started the engine of the car, and both vehicles drove away, Crowley’s tear-stained face mouthing silently at Aziraphale through the car’s rear window.

*

It was small tragedy in the grand scale of things. When Aziraphale’s parents died, when his eldest brother called him a slur and cut him off over the phone, when his first and only serious boyfriend broke up with him, he probably felt blacker despair, or cried more tears. None of those things stayed with him the way the loss of Crowley did. He learnt to live without his parents and his brother, finding he breathed easier when he allowed to hold his head up proudly. He forgave Mike for dumping him, and eventually conceded that Mike deserved someone who could give him all his heart.

He thought about Crowley more. He read theology at university because angels and demons pulled at him in a way he couldn’t quantify, though he quickly discovered that his pet theory, that angels and demons were “just people” who weren’t evil or good inherently, wasn’t very popular with the profs. When they deducted marks for what they called “flights of fancy” he considered it an apt penance for taking so long to come over to Crowley’s view. 

He collected James Bond books. He bought cufflinks with angel wings on them. He always smiled at the first signs of rain.  
*  
It was raining. It was raining above ground and Aziraphale had forgotten his umbrella again, so he was tired and alone and thirty-four, and absolutely soaking wet on the London underground. He stood and started at nothing, his numb-cold hand white-knuckled uncomfortably around the bar. His day, once he got to work, would be long and unfulfilling, a sequence of Excel spreadsheets and sub-par coffee, and then home to his flat which was small and ugly and very, very empty. As a reflex, he momentarily imagined that his boring job was a cover for his real, angelic mission. Find the Serpent, defeat him, and destroy his noxious influence on humanity. He was getting close. He needed only to follow up a few leads… it was something he told himself at least once a day, and yet he found himself smiling anyway. 

His eyes focussed, briefly, on a handsome male face a couple of meters away across the car, before he looked away automatically.  
Then he did a double take.

No.

There was no way. It wasn’t possible.

He looked again, really concentrating now. 

The jawline was stronger now, with a necessarily unfamiliar stubble, and the brow was heavier. He was tall, probably somewhere around Aziraphale’s own height. The hair was the same, even cut in a similar style, the skin tone, the excellent cheekbones, the eyes…

The man who may or may not have been Crowley wasn’t looking at Aziraphale, he was facing him side-on. Aziraphale was just about the maneuver his way over to him when the car stopped and people went flooding out onto the platform, including the man who might be Crowley. This wasn’t Aziraphale’s stop, not even close. He had to make a decision.  
He bolted out of the car and onto the platform, his wet shoes skidding. He looked around wildly, before catching sight of a flash of dark hair. Thank God he’s tall now, Aziraphale thought as he jogged through the crowd, around a corner, and up the stairs- when had he gotten so out of shape? He was getting closer, gasping as he flung himself up the remaining stairs, no doubt causing the passers-by to laugh at him for being fat and un-athletic, scanning the crowd again for that familiar head of hair.

There! The other man was close.

“Crowley!” shouted Aziraphale.

The other man stopped. He stiffened. He turned on his heel, mouth agape. 

“Angel?”

**Author's Note:**

> I have been trying for the past, like, five months to write a second chapter for this, and i've come to the conclusion that nothing i wrote would be an actual improvement.   
> thank you for reading, and if you like angst human aus, check out my other stuff cos i write a lot of that lol.


End file.
